


Without a Trace

by afoxesportion



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Spoilers, canon compliant until it isn't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-02-09 10:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18636064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afoxesportion/pseuds/afoxesportion
Summary: Following The Snap, Clint and Darcy search for answers and soulmates they can't find. They break in the fallout, like so many around them. Can they help each other heal in the hell that Thanos created?





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

> SO much spoiler here. Proceed with caution if you've not yet cried your way through Endgame.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 0, The Snap happens and Darcy and Clint realise their soulmates have dissolved to dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I set an evening aside to flesh out some drafted chapters but decided to rewrite this one instead, it's significantly longer. Enjoy.

The absence of the noise of his family was deafening. Birds that had been watching lunch with interest no longer called to one another, the sound of the boys playing had gone, and Laura’s calls to food were cut short. 

He frantically searches the farm, running from barn to field, through their home and back again. He ran through the boundaries of his house arrest, ankle bracelet screeching in warning. ‘To hell with the government and their plea deal,’ he thought as he pushed the limits of the lines and his lungs, scouring the farm; searching for what he knew wasn’t there. For who he knew wasn’t there.

—

Darcy hears the screeching of horns and tyres as metal meets metal on the streets below. It’s not unusual for New York to break into chaos these days. It’s rare but not unusual for the sounds of an alien attack or an evil genius that’s snapped _again_  wreaking havoc outside her window. New York carries on and she’s got used to it.

The Avengers, she knows, are out of town but S.H.I.E.L.D are probably on the scene already and the X-Men can always be relied on to run towards danger. She doesn’t need to get involved, it’s her day off after all and after the first year of saying ‘yes, sir’ to all the senator threw her way she’s got a strict ‘off-the-clock’ policy.

It could be a gut feeling, it could be her guilt at not getting involved, or maybe she’s just antsy when Bucky’s away but she soon realises this isn’t your ‘run of the mill, straightforward, every-third-Friday’ New York attack.

Pulling up Twitter on her Starkpad she wades through the trolls, the fake news and hate speech to glean the nuggets of truth that hide in the streams of tweets. She soon realises that the madness on the streets below is bigger than New York. It’s bigger than her, though her ego wouldn’t let her admit it too loudly, maybe it’s even bigger than James and he’s the world. He’s _her_  world. 

In the garbled chaos of a planet breaking down she reads the word ‘dust’ and she hears the screams, because it’s the twenty first century and trauma is live-streamed now. She sees the tear tracks and the car crashes and watches as the world falls apart.

—

Twenty eight minutes later, Clint is sat distraught in the dirt, looking at the empty space before him. His phone buzzes loudly as it lights up with the image of a sinister looking black spider, chosen by Tony who thought it hilarious.

He swipes slowly, dragging his thumb across the dirty screen, ’Barton? Clint, are you there?’ She sounds frantic and worried, not like Nat at all.

‘Yeah, ‘m here,’ he replies, his voice low and hoarse from calling the names of his family he’s beginning to realise just aren’t _there_.

‘Laura? The kids?’ She asks and if he didn’t know better he’d say he heard hope in her voice.

He chokes a little, and in any other circumstance for Nat, that would’ve been enough of a reply, but he has to get the words out, ’are not.’

The line goes silent and Clint sits and waits, head in his hand, holding the phone to his ear like a lifeline.

‘It’s global, Clint. Half the world’s gone. They’ve just vanished, Steve… I’ve spoken to Steve he saw them go.’

‘Who? Who else’s gone?’

“James, Vision, Wanda, Sam, Tony’s missing, nobody can find Fury, Maria was supposed to be with him…’ he hears the panic in her voice rising as she works through the short list of people she’d deem worthy of the title ‘friend’. Distantly he notes that she’s behaving decidedly unlike the ‘normal’ Nat and it unnerves him.

‘Where Nat? Where’ve they gone?’ He interrupts her before the panic sets in, from experience he knows the Black Widow is best unfazed.

‘Nobody knows, Steve… he said they turned to dust.’

Clint looks around at the dirt around him, there’s no piles of dust, no tidy heaps of his family, no real answer.

‘So what do we do?’ He asks, knowing she’ll take point, that she’ll turn off and take control and it might get bloody but she’s the Black Widow and she can _fix_  this because that’s what she does. She knuckles down, she always has an answer, she takes down the bad guys and she does it _so_  well.

There’s silence on the line and then a sigh, ’Птичка, I wish I knew’.

—

Darcy’s drunk when she finally builds up the nerve to check her left ankle. In high school and college, before she met Bucky, she’d joked that the words were the messy scrawl of a serial killer, all rough lines and aggressive dots. Obviously once she met him that joke was swiftly pushed to the wayside.

In the years before he first spoke them and then during the days and months when he’d go away she’d spent so many hours staring at them, willing him to come to her and say them again. And again.

She knew they’d be gone before she looked but she had to check. An hour after the first people vanished rumours that their words had gone, that they were wiped off skin without a trace, had started to circulate.

Eyes closed, she pulls down her sock, stroking their placement with her thumb. She opens her eyes, already crying as she sees the blank ankle before her. He’s gone, again, she realises in abject defeat. And this time he’s gone without a trace.

—

His words were gone. His stupid, lovely, brilliant, happy words were gone. He’d always thought that with that one sentence he’d _known_  Laura, even in the years before she showed up and spoke them.

On crap nights and dark days he’d find a mirror, twist and look at the words, looping along his lower back like a tramp stamp, and smile knowing that there was happiness for him if he just carried on and fought for it.

In their bathroom, he twisted and stared at the blank space left behind. His words were gone and they’d taken everything with them.

—

As the world burnt everyone from global leaders to the smallest communities looked to each other for leadership, nobody wanting to take responsibility. Nobody was prepared to step up and take charge.

Who could co-ordinate the search and rescues when there was only a skeleton crew to start with? On a local level some people took charge organising food banks and shelter, later when people threw around phrases about ‘moving on’ they’d collect the clothes of the dusted donated by loved ones who could no longer bear the reminder in the closet.

In the end, begrudgingly and not without argument, Natasha took charge of S.H.I.E.L.D and from her desk began to co-ordinate thecrisis management of planet Earth. Steve was her first choice but he had no patience for world leaders, or what was left of them. Not that Natasha did have the patience, but they took fewer liberties with her on the opposite end of the conference call.

The fact of the matter was that 9,000 planes had been airborne when chaos descended on planet Earth. One million people were destroyed in one moment of time. In a single second the lives of a million were culled by the whims of a titan but, around the world, it became just another horror. Everything was a horror the day 3.5 billion vanished from the face of the earth.


	2. Day 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some unwanted guests visit the Barton farm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not usually one to recommend music for fics but I listened to a LOT of Gillian Welch writing this and Everything is Free is not a bad choice.

It was mid-afternoon when the sound of truck tyres on gravel woke Clint, pulling him from a restless night of sleep on the couch and the sight of Laura and the kids fading to nothing before his eyes. He’d fallen asleep wearing his hearing aids and though he was running down batteries quicker than he could change them he didn’t care. If they came back, he’d hear them. 

Boots hit the ground and the truck doors slammed as two heavy sets of footsteps approached the house, stomping along the porch. They wanted to be heard, wanted to draw any survivors (if that’s what you could call them) out. Peering through the windows they tried the door, roughly rattling the handle in the frame, the door was locked but there was no sign of life inside.

As the pair shared light and meaningless conversation he listened. They withdrew to the barn, checking the outbuildings for anyone left working the land. Any pretence was lost when they reached the barn, cheering at the sight of the tractor and machinery left for the taking.

He watched from the window as they walked the perimeter, sizing up what was his. Clint, gunning for a fight, let them. The anger, that had been simmering below the surface dulled by alcohol for the past 4 days, was starting to leak out. History had proven the best way to let this anger out was to punch someone hard and, preferably, repeatedly. So he watched and he waited and when he had enough he’d get stuck in and skim the top off some of the rage he felt inside.

Reaching the barn they began to bicker over the machinery, hot-wiring the car would be no trouble but was it worth coming back with a tow for the tractor?

“Best haul it now, before folks realise they’re easy to find if you know where to look,” the one in charge argued.

“We could load the truck and car with crap from the kitchen, we don’t need a tractor to shift too.”

“It’ll be worth it, Jake found a tow at ‘side of the road, abandoned, engine still runnin’. We give him a cut and we’ll be set, Andy, this tractor will be worth getting Jake down here.”

Andy huffed but conceded, scuffing dirt up with his boots as he headed back to the truck with the leader, jumping into the cab and slamming the door with attitude Clint would have scolded his kids for.

Clint went down to the kitchen, pulled open the fridge and searched the rapidly depleting supplies for the contents of a sandwich. He probably needed food, he definitely needed bourbon, though he was sure there was some of Nat’s paint stripper vodka rattling around the bottom of the freezer.

—

As cities burnt and society crumbled, looting spread across the world like wildfire. While one politician condemned them, the people taking from the dust, searching for food and clothes in the debris of humanity; another would praise resourcefulness in times of crisis.

The world was divided, there was just as much genuine need as there was opportunistic thieving but nobody, no resource, was there to assign and assess and decide who was worthy or not.

It couldn’t be the government’s priority, not in those first weeks of chaos. While they reeled and tried to recover, while they attempted to measure the sheer damage wrought how could they decide who was or wasn’t an orphan of Thanos? Who would get and who would not? Who decided what they could or couldn’t take from the dust?

There was nobody there, nobody to step up to the small task of making sure mouths were fed, backs were clothed, that everyone had water. In those first desperate days mothers and fathers, if they were left, would do what they needed to and people would take what they could and if you had someone to provide for you then you were a ‘lucky’ one.

After Endgame they’d still debate it. Still debate what was legal or not during the global disaster, the courts would be full of ‘snap crimes’ and lawyers arguing need where there wasn’t or blaming extenuating circumstances that were never a factor at all.

—

They came back, of course, like the idiots they were and Clint was relieved. They’d bought a fight to him after all, it saved him searching for a face to put his fist in.

Now awake he hears their approach long before they pull up to the farmhouse. Part of the appeal of the farm had been the worn winding track from the road, Laura’d roll her eyes and mutter about missing the city he’d ‘stole’ her from but she loved their little piece of Earth really. 

Breaks squeal and doors slam as the two trucks pull up in front of the barn, three sets of boots hit gravel this time around and it would appear they’ve bought Jake, nearly a fair fight.

The keys to the tractor were hooked under the seat, no reason not to be out in the sticks, and they find them easy enough. The engine fires up on the third attempt with mild protest and a cough, the smell of diesel strong in the air.

“Stick with Jake, Andy, I’m gonna check out the house,” muttered the leader, heading to the unlocked screen round back.

Clint hears him whoop at the sight of Laura’s cream KitchenAid displayed with pride on the counter. He listens to the rattle of drawers as he rummages rifling through the passports of his family. He hears the sharp intake of breath when he spots the strategically abandoned sandwich on the furthest counter from the door, where he’s cornered.

Clint makes light work of him, clocking him as he turns, drawing his fist again before he can raise his own. He cries out but hasn’t time to warn the others, his head hits the granite counter and he goes still and silent as blood leaks onto the wooden floor.

Andy he takes out with an arrow from a bow stashed above the kitchen cabinet, his only warning the whoosh of air before the pain of metal through his throat and the gurgle of blood filling his lungs.

Laura had laughed when he hid the bow but he’d stood his ground. His argument was nearly anyone can use a gun and everyone can fuck up with a gun. Mistakes were easy with a gun and they had kids about, using a bow took a bit more skill to do serious damage. Plus he was Hawkeye so why the hell not?

All that’s left is Jake, Jake who’s screaming as he watches Andy fall to his knees and then his face in front of him in the dirt. “I didn’t know you were here, man! They said it was empty, said you were gone,” he cried out as Clint stalked toward him in a way that would make the Black Widow proud.

“This is my home. This is my farm. This shit is _my_ shit,” Clint tells him, as if it’s explanation enough for the dead cohorts.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he tries to rationalise with a voice that shakes while he knees buckle.

“Which is exactly why you came, right? You thought I was dust in the wind like half the world so what’s mine was yours to take?”

Jake has no answer for him, he just stares up from his place in the dirt with wide eyes. Clint can smell the sweat pouring off him, see his body give in to sheer panic and terror.

Clint sneered down at him, hiding the resignation with a mask of disgust, “get the fuck off my farm. Don’t come back, don’t bring your friends, know that what happened to them will happen to you if you do.”

He turns on his heel, heading back to the house and listens to Jake scramble into the cab of his truck. Tyres screech as he speeds away, down the lane and through the meadow. He listens as he reaches woodland and only then does the truck slow from breakneck to fast, thinking himself out of earshot and sight.

The hours pass and he doesn’t come back and Clint’s almost disappointed.

—

That night he builds a bonfire in the furthest field that was still within sight of the farm. In the middle of the tall, burning pyre are the bodies of the looters wrapped in hessian sacks and straw soaked in diesel.

Downwind of the smell Clint watches as the fire burns through the evening into the early hours. He watches and drinks Nat’s cheap, icy cold vodka that burns his throat like the fire before him.


	3. Day 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The soulmarks that vanished, the marks that faded, and those that stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, I updated the first chapter a week or so ago and it's 3 times the length and has much more substance now - if you've not read it yet I recommend popping back first.

Soulmarks have, much like everything else, a life cycle. When the second half of a pair is born the first words they’ll speak to the other manifests on their partner’s body and vice versa. People have been known to go fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five years before marks manifest; there’s no rhyme or reason to the age differences though not all marks equal a love match.

When a part of a pair dies, the marks fade to a translucent shadow on the skin. They become a memory to the holder, there’s still a link to the bond that was.

Natasha was thirteen and known as Natalia when her mark faded. Her soulmate, a lanky and determined thing in his mid-twenties, was shot before her eyes in an anonymous wet room in the depths below the Red Room. Her screams reverberated down the corridor as “ _ты в безопасности_ ” faded to a glimmer before her eyes in the harsh fluorescent light. 

Steve’s words had faded not in an instant but over a dark few days, he held her hand all the while as Peggy slipped into a coma and then away from him, taking the depth of her words on his skin with her.

Peggy herself had spent many an hour staring in fascination as Steve’s never faded but remained cold to the touch, giving her hope through the war and on dark nights after. Though she was told repeatedly that Steve was long gone from this world, she and Howard knew her words told a different story and never gave up the search.

When Tony Stark sped off through the atmosphere, chasing the bad guys further than he’d been before Pepper grieved. As people vanished around her, fading to dust and dying on the wind she wept for the souls taken too soon. The marks of the taken vanished from skin, leaving no trace, no reminder to those they’d left behind.

Darcy, Clint and Thor - all had blank skin to contend with, all caught themselves rubbing at words that weren’t there. Found themselves doubting the link they’d known instinctively. Many words faded on Day 0, leaving the ghosts of meet cutes and banal greetings behind; others vanished in an instant, at a snap of the fingers.

But Pepper’s words didn’t leave her; not on the first day nor on the second. It was on day fifteen that she first noticed the pigment begin to change, when she saw the strong black slashes of the slurred “ _what’s a pretty thing like you doing in a lab like this?_ ” alter.

For a week the words grew dimmer and dimmer, leaving her with no doubt by Day 20 that Tony was fading, in deepest, darkest space, without her by his side and it killed her.

It was on Day 22 when the satellites picked up the object moving rapidly towards Earth, images showing a burning, bright tail to the UFO that was decidedly doom arriving for the rest of them. On Day 23 the sombre face of Carol Danvers guided the ship to the ground before her, Tony rousing whatever energy he had left behind the glass. 

It took a full month for her words to return to their former glory, only then when her mark and his snark returned did she breathe easily again and start to believe herself to be a ‘lucky one’.

—

From the edge of her seat, wrapped in a blanket on the couch, Darcy watches as the rolling 24 hour news channels implode. Each one tells the same, vague story. With no facts to share, just sheer terror, the sensationalists spiral into chaos. Fox News becomes vaguely sane in the hysteria of it all.

The facts that they can gather are simple: something, in a blaze of white light, is hurtling towards Earth. They’re all going to die, _of course._ Every quote from every ‘expert’ is dismantled by the hosts who, with their hastily pulled together panels, try to make sense of it all; or, more realistically, try to get the most ratings before the end of the world.

The optimists, and Darcy has to admit she’s amazed there are still some optimists floating around out there, call it ‘hope’. Hope is coming to save them all from the terror of the past month. When pressed for a more definitive idea of what shape or form ‘hope’ may manifest they all come up short.

“This is the answer to our prayers,” declares a balding evangelist in the middle of a cornfield. “This is the salvation our Lord promised us, it is the reward for our faith, and it will be the doom of the cursed.”

They cut to the studio where the host and panel listen solemnly, with no answers or real idea of what’s happening, every tidbit must be taken seriously. Every morsel given airtime and debated until exhaustion.

Darcy meanwhile is in her element, after three hours marker pens litter the coffee table and a huge timeline of events is spread across the floor in front of the TV. She tracks trajectories of the ‘UFO’ - a word she _hates_ after her time with Jane. “There’s no such _thing_ as a UFO, Darcy. If it’s not readily identified then they’re just _lazy_ scientists and they need to _try harder_ ,” she'd tell her, like it was always that easy.

She monitors the social feeds of the United Nations and governments, of NASA and other space agencies as well as every observatory with a half-decent telescope (by her standards, not Jane’s). Someone will get a good view, work it out and answer the questions, the endless questions, being posed by the planet and when they do Darcy Lewis will be ready to poli-sci the shit out of it all.

“Twenty two days ago, Karen, the people of Earth experienced the good Lord’s wrath; today he will reward the blessed for their prayers and faith. This will be a gift from God, it will smite the unholy and those who lost faith when the dust cam-“

“Sorry Martin, we’re going to have to stop you there and go to a representative from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.”

The camera cuts to a pale man with tufts of hair whipped in wind coming off the Thames. “Yes, I was just saying, we can confirm this object - we’re still not sure _exactly_ what it is, bit of an unknown actually… Well, we can confirm, we’ll find out soon!” He jokes awkwardly and Darcy recognises all of the signs of scientist-pushed-in-front-of-a-camera.

“Soon, Dr Wells?” Asks Karen in the studio, with the patience of one of the evangelist’s saints. 

“Oh, yes, very soon - if our calculations are correct, in approximately forty five minutes the object will reach the Earth’s atmosphere”.

—

Steve Rogers stared at the screen watching as the alien ship hurtled toward him, “30 minutes till impact, Friday, have you made contact?”

“It’s still too far out for reliable signal. However, I’m calibrated to recognise the frequency of Stark Tech onboard. I believe Mr Stark is returning home, Captain.”

Steve’s voice hitched as he pulled up the screen on his cell, fingers hovering over the ‘Miss Potts’ in his phonebook, “and his status?”

“Unconfirmed.”

—

It soon becomes clear the target is the greater New York area and Darcy’s spidey sense begins to tingle, there’s no such thing as coincidence, right? Or surely there isn’t when it comes to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers.

On a whim, one she doesn’t expect to come to fruition, she calls the number the Black Widow gave her “only in case of emergency, Darcy”. Like she’d abuse a direct line to the Avengers. Again.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. speaking, please state your name and emergency?”

She can’t help herself as she quips, “really, buddy, what do you think?”

“I beg your pardon?” snapped the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent-come-lackey. “Listen, I’ve another 33 calls queued up after you, please state your name and emergency or move along.”

She sighed, “right you are, I’m Darcy Lewis: person of interest for a number of things really, won’t go into them now…”

“And your emergency?”

“Yeah, that. Can you patch me through to the Black Widow? Or Thor if he’s returned? Maybe Steve… Bruce would be better if he’s not bunkered down with a camomile tea...”

“Let me get this right, you just want me to patch you through to the Avengers?”

“Yeah, or anyone with enough security clearance to let me know what the fuck’s going on right now?”

“I can’t just patch you through to the Avengers,” he replies, clearly in disbelief that she had the nerve to call.

“Of course not, you’ve got to check with them first, I can hold…?”

She hears him sigh heavily. “Someone will call you back,” he tells her and before she can argue he hangs up leaving her with the dial tone.

The ship, confirmed by satellite images within twenty minutes of her call to S.H.I.E.L.D., isn’t blown out of the sky by any of the strategically placed missiles across the planet when it reaches the atmosphere - something Darcy interprets as a good thing.

But it’s another two hours of watching the news and waiting before her cell rings on the coffee table. “Darcy!” booms the familiar voice of Thor. “Tony has returned! He is sickly but brings with him friends and soon we shall bring them back; your James, my Jane and all the others!”

Thor’s hope is contagious and she’s soon grinning at the TV that still speculates on the new arrival. Maybe, she thinks to herself, the optimists were right after all and hope has returned? Though she can’t imagine they thought hope would manifest as Tony Stark.

—

Clint watches as the anchorwoman confirms the return of Tony Stark to planet Earth, twenty-two days after he went missing during The Snap. After the initial statement from Stark Industries, that simply confirms Tony’s returned alive, the restless urge to get stuck in he’d been keeping at bay surges again.

It’s been twenty-two days since he last had any human interaction. Twenty-two days if you don’t count the one that ended with an arrow through the throat and, for his sanity, Clint didn’t count that.

The house arrest had been bad enough before The Snap, but he’d had plenty of distraction, plenty to make it worth the plea deal he’d taken. Now, he sat and waited, holding tight on Nat’s instruction, while she greased the remaining palms that were stopping him from getting stuck in and _fixing_ this thing.

He dials Nat’s number and speaks as soon as the line connects, “get me out of here, Nat. I need to help,” his voice croaky and hoarse with disuse.

“I’m working on it Clint, but you’ve got to sit tight a little longer,” it wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation and the patience in her voice was a gift few others would receive.

“I want to help. I need to help. We’ve got to get them back,” his desperation leaks through the line and her sigh is almost inaudible but with his hearing aids he hears it.

“We will get them back, but things are tense right now and what I need from you, how _you_ can _help me_ , Clint, is to _sit tight_ and not make matters worse by breaching your house arrest.”

Clint Barton is nothing if not determined and stubborn and the words he replies with conviction are inevitable, “It’s been twenty days, Nat. I’ve sat tight, I’m not sitting any longer.”

“Barton, that wasn’t a request-“

“Yeah? Well Romanova, I ain’t askin’ anymore.”

He hears her takes a breath, looking for patience they both know she doesn’t have, “if you do this, I can’t help you, Clint. With things like they are, I’m not in a position to save your ass this time.”

He’s silent and he knows she’s waiting, growing hopeful that he’s heeding her words, that maybe for once he’ll do as he’s told and just listen to his partner. “…Good to know,” he replies before hanging up.

It’s a quick jog to the work shed and the adrenaline in his veins makes quick work of the short distance. Searching the shelves he finds what he’s looking for, a pair of bolt cutters amongst the tools, and tests the sharpness of the blades.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he mutters as the bolt cutters slice through the silicone and copper wires of the ankle bracelet like butter. He cuts through the thick shackle that had been weighing him down for too long, allowing government goons to intrude and keep tabs on his life - a role he was all too familiar with himself.

In a fit of melodrama - he’d been locked up for two years, sue him - he finds the nearest stash of bow and arrows. Lashing the remains of the bracelet to an incendiary arrow, he aims only for the furthest point he can manage as the alarm starts to peal aggressively at the circuit breaking.

“Sorry, Nat,” he whispers as he releases the string and shoots, watching as it soars far away from him and his ankle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that Tony's return is pretty low-key in the film, but a) unless the ship was on stealth and managed to hide Danvers in big-bright beacon mode then I really can't imagine, given the circumstances, that'd have gone down without social panic and b) creative license. Thanks to the people who've commented, left kudos or bookmarked/subscribed so far - I appreciate it :) x


	4. Day 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To say the whole ‘go find Thanos and use the stones to Ctrl-Alt-Delete this mess’ idea didn’t go as planned is probably an understatement. Trigger warning: alcohol poisoning and touching on suicide - call me out if I’ve missed any TWs prior to this, please.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, this was hard to wrangle and needed a 4th draft. There’s no Clint in this one and also a trigger warning for alcohol poisoning and touching on suicide. I’d say enjoy, but…

Not that Darcy’s a cynic, but to say the whole ‘go find Thanos and use the stones to ctrl-alt-delete this mess’ idea didn’t go as planned is probably a massive understatement. At least that’s the general idea she gets rubbing sleep from her eyes when Thor shows up at her door the wrong side of 3am on a Monday morning.

At best he looks broken, honest to Frigga, she’s never seen him so distraught, not even when he came back to Earth after Ragnarok the lives of so many Asgardians on his heavyset shoulders. His eyes are red, his beard tangled and the smell of lightning mingles with the air of booze radiating from him. “I killed him, Darcy,” he chokes out as he pushes through the half-open door to her box of an apartment.  

“I killed him, I took his head with Stormbreaker, it was not noble but, while he was restrained I took what was owed and watched as he bled into the dirt…” he breaks off with a groan, falling back into the plush, mismatched cushions of her couch. “Oh, I killed him, Darcy, but it was all for naught. Thanos is dead but we cannot save those he stole from us. He destroyed the stones before we arrived for him, the bastard”.

She follows him, via the nook her landlord has the audacity to call a ‘kitchenette’, grabbing a bottle of bourbon and a pair of tumblers on her way. Intuition, or just plain as daylight common sense, indicates that whatever’s coming next won’t be good and it won’t be easy to hear. But, she reasons, it might be a little easier with a dram or two of liquid courage and she’s probably going to want to gain some ground on the already half-gone god of thunder.

After settling herself into a comfier-than-it-looks armchair she found at a thrift store, she pours a drink for herself in the first glass before doubling the generous home measure in the second for Thor. “Well, big guy,” she says with a familiar grin that deceives neither of them but is comforting nonetheless. “NDAs be damned, why don’t you start at the beginning?”

The sun’s started to rise when Thor breaks entirely and she looses whatever hold she had on the pieces her heart had broken into over the past few weeks and the long months before. The pair of them are a mess of unflattering tears and broken, incoherent sentences that start or finish but never both. “I just want,” he cries, pausing to blow his nose loudly and toss the tissue onto a growing pile on the coffee table. “I just want my Jane back”.

She sighs heavily, “I’m never going to see him again, Thor. Never. How is that fair? How is that just? It wasn’t always good, sure, there were times when he had to…” she trails off to drain her glass mid-ramble. Thor raises the bottle in offer of another drink, not the original bottle of course - that’s long drained and tucked in the recycling like a good binge drinking millennial.

“Sometimes… sometimes James had to leave,” she explains. “He’d go away for a while, he’d have to”.

“Like Wakanda?” Thor asks gently. Though three sheets to the wind, even for him, his curiosity is peaked. There’d been many a hushed argument between him and his Jane over whether or not to pry when James Barnes went away with little explanation. Darcy Lewis was never one for brevity and her uncharacteristically closed-lipped response to questioning about James’ ‘trips’ always raised eyebrows between him and his love.

“Yes, exactly like Wakanda. He was working through… some things. There was stuff he had to process and deal with and that was fine because he was going to come back to _me_ , he was… he was still my soulmate, Thor. And now that’s gone. That _one_ thing we had left, that _one big thing_ that defined us is gone”.

Things get a bit messy after that, or they just get messier than they already were. Early morning arrives and Darcy’s memory becomes a blur but she’s fairly sure she discovers you can ubereats alcohol from the twenty-four hour off license three blocks away. There’s mead, and rum, and whiskey, and vodka that could easily strip five layers of paint off a wall and it’s all just one big mess.

* * *

 To say she was drunk… Well, there’d been enough understatements that evening… or morning. She’s shitfaced at best and Thor’s far worse. In the nihilism that followed Thor’s tale she matched him drink for drink as the pair chased oblivion together, looking for relief from the horror that had unravelled over the past twenty-six days.

She goes to the bathroom, stumbling like a fool, her feet not quite getting the memos of intent her brain sends through the fog. She stares at her pale face in the mirror, looking for something that might be clarity. _In summary_ , she thinks, _the stones are gone and we’re all fucked._

Hidden away from Thor in the bathroom she pulls out her phone and doesn’t even pause before dialling the number she knows by heart. She can’t ignore the pang of disappointment when she gets James Barnes’ pretty-unreliable-at-the-best-of-times voicemail, even though she braced herself against the sink ready for it.

And then she hears it and it hits her, “Buck’s phone, I ain’t answerin’, but leave a message ’n I might get back to ya”. That cocky, certain tone. What’d she give, even half the time he _was_ there with her, for that shit. How hard she’d work on a bad day to bring the Brooklyn back. To raise a smile and lighten his eyes, to remind the tortured soul there was something to stick around for.

“Oh Barnes,” she slurs down the line when the tone prompts her to leave a message. “Have I got a bone to pick with _you_!” She laughs lightly, drunk enough to find her cliché self hilarious.

With a loud sigh, one she just knows he’d recognise as her tempering the ‘tude, she starts again, trying to rein in the angry housewife. “Look, Barnes, you left and that’s _fine_ , ok? I’m fine about that. We talked and I get it James, I get you. But you’ve _left_ again, you’ve left me _again_ , James”.

“And I just can’t-“ she breaks to sob and breathes heavily down the phone, absently watching as her hands grip the sink, and her knuckles go white with the strain.

“i just can’t carry on if you keep leaving me, Buck. You keep leaving, you keep pushing me away, _hell_ , now you’ve succeeded on the biggest scale there is. This isn’t your fault, I know that, I’m not that selfish, but I’m _stuck_ here. I’m stuck here watching as it all goes to shit and it’s all _so. fucking. shit_.”

This isn’t going the way she planned, not that she planned it, but still, “oh, this isn’t working. I just… I love you, James. Come home to me, _please_. I need you”.

After the voicemail she heads back to the couch and if she’s changed, if she’s crossed a dark line in her mind that she doesn’t talk about she doesn’t mention it to Thor, not that he’s in any state to notice. Though she knows, when sober, she’s in a place where she should mention it. It’s one of the things they’d talked about, in the S.H.I.E.L.D. issued therapy dressed up as ‘a debriefing session’.

It’s undeniably morning when she finds herself back in the armchair with some nasty thoughts and a lot of half-empty bottles begging to be drained. There’s a far-gone god-come-Avenger who’s no good to anybody curled up, snoring with his head in his arms and a quilted throw over his lap.

It’s his loud snores that are the last thing she remembers from the bender, that and thinking, _damn, Jane how do you even?_

* * *

Fast forward who even _knows_ how many hours later and she wakes up, gradually floating in and out, to bright lights burning her retinas, the beeping of medical machines loud and pounding through her fragile head, and the tug of an IV pumping fluids into the crease of her elbow.

It might be the first time she’s had her stomach pumped but then and there, with the ghost of the tube lingering in her throat, she resolves it definitely is going to be the last.

She gradually becomes aware of the determined tappidy-clack noise to her left that doesn’t compute with the rest of the traditional hospital sounds around her. She turns her head, almost relieved that she can, to see Pepper Potts typing into a shiny StarkPad balanced on her lap. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, and Darcy’s mesmerised for a few less-lucid moments.

“Hey, Pep?” She asks, with a voice like gravel. Of all the people she’d expect at her bedside, and _wow_ that list got a lot shorter 26 days ago, Pepper doesn’t make the list. It’s not that she doesn’t know her per se but, really, she and Pepper Potts (Pepper _freaking_ Potts) are not tight. Sure, they’ve drank together before, and her stomach turns slightly at the thought, whenever Thor extended his invite to Jane and his shield-sister but they’re not in the same circles really. 

Pepper levels a look at her across the top of her screen and, oh _boy_ , does that woman gives great stink eye. That was, without a doubt, just a taste of the Pepper Potts’ Stern Look® and Darcy fleetingly wonders how many Tony Stark Science! binges have been stopped in their tracks with that glance. “Darcy, how’re you feeling?” she asks, with a small smile that softens the sternness.

She can’t help but scoff and make a show of looking around at the nurse checking her IV, the starchy sheets and the murky jug of water. “…really?” She chokes around the chaffing in her throat.

Pepper’s expression is sympathetic as she appreciates both the irony of the question and Darcy’s ability to recognise it. After putting the laptop back into her bag she leans forward in her chair, focusing all her attention on the young girl in the hospital bed before her. “It’s polite to ask,” she replies with a shrug and wry smile.

“Well then I’m swell, Pep. Never been better,” she quips in reply offering a smile to the redhead in an attempt to relieve some of the bitterness from the sting. 

Pepper can’t help but laugh openly before replying with a rueful glance and soft eyes, “it’s truly a blessing that fate hasn’t manoeuvred you to spend more time with Tony”.

“That does not surprise me in the slightest,” Darcy replies and it’s almost funny how easily they’ve slipped into something conversational and normal with where they are and why they’re there looming over them.

Pepper sighs and settles back before levelling the stern expression on her again and Darcy braces for a lecture, “Darcy, we’ve lost enough. Don’t take yourself out of the equation too.”

She goes on and sure it’s probably justified, there’s enough going on in the world, enough people mourning and enough pain. Adding herself to the list of people to grieve? Becoming another victim of Thanos, and that’s what she’d be, that’s what she’d be reduced to. There’d been a rise of suicides following The Snap all of them already pinned directly to fallout from The Snap.

The Talk reminds her of Steve and she’s glad it’s Pepper not Captain America himself delivering it, though it reeks of his work and the way it’s going he’d be mighty proud of how she’s doing. Not that she wants to think too much about Steve right now, she’s enjoying the distance he’s keeping from her, no doubt too much of a reminder of the friend he’s lost again.

Her relationship with Steve is an odd one, ever since she matched with James Steve had been totally on board with Team Darcy and Bucky. The problem is that he wants the best for James and will move hell and high-water to give it to him. Steve is old-fashioned, of _course_ he is, so from Steve’s perspective what’s best for James is totally, unequivocally his soulmate; it’s just that he has lofty expectations that can be hard to meet sometimes, not everyone can drink the Kool-Aid all the time. 

“I’ve lost everything, Pepper,” she says when Pepper finally stops the monologue that Darcy had faded away from in her brooding. And she has lost everything, that’s half the problem, she lost Jane and her Mom in The Snap and yes, others have lost more but it _hurts_ all the time. Her support network has been reduced to an emotionally unstable Norse god who _clearly_ isn’t in that good a place either.

“You’ve lost Bucky before, they’ll get him back,” she rationalises and it becomes glaringly obvious to Darcy that this visit has 100% been sponsored and approved by Captain America.

“But they’re gone, Pepper. Thor went with the team to find the stones. They’re gone. Thanos destroyed them. He destroyed it all,” she’s defeated and the novelty of the visit has worn off, Pepper _did_ get her’s back after all and Darcy can’t help but resent her for it. She wants to slip into some more sleep and drift away from this nightmare for a little longer.

At Darcy’s shrug Pepper replies “I know, but that doesn’t mean-“. 

“My mark is gone, Pepper,” Darcy interrupts and her voice doesn’t waver. “It went with the rest of them. If he was coming back, it’d tell me”. She’s put a lot of thought into this, too much thought, she’s starting to accept the shitty situation, though that doesn’t mean she’ll recover from it.

Maybe this was the wakeup call she needed, the harsh lights of the hospital seem like the harsh reality she has to face. Something inside her died twenty-six days ago, it died when the planet was torn apart; it died when the one person on the planet meant for her dissolved to dust. She’s changed and she knows she’ll change more before this is over, before this rotten saga meets its conclusion in whichever way it’ll come about, armageddon most likely.

“So, did you match Thor drink for drink on purpose? Is that what this is?” Pepper asks exasperated with the defeat and nihilism before her, she can’t help it, it’s just not her way. Pepper sees a brick wall and scales it, a glass ceiling and smashes it; as a young girl when she was told ‘no’ she looked into the eyes of the patriarchy and set her sights on it.

Darcy shakes her head at the question before carding frustrated and restless fingers through her hair, “don’t ask me that, I just… I wanted to forget for a bit. I wanted to take a step back”.

“You nearly went off the ledge,” Pepper’s retort is grim but she eases it with a soft squeeze of Darcy’s ankle on the bed before her. There’s compassion to her visit, it’s not solely a manipulation of the Spangled Man, she likes Darcy and she’s concerned and it’s making her more forthright than she thinks she has the right to be. 

“Well, it’s a good thing someone caught me then,” she says with disregard. This conversation is hitting all kinds of nerves and weak spots for Darcy and yes, it’s probably necessary and needed after the night/morning/month she’d had but _damn_ it all.

Pepper snaps, “don’t do this! Don’t be this! Don’t let Thanos win, Darcy!” Her voice raises for the first time in exasperation and anger and god damn frustration at Darcy’s stubborn soul.

“He already has won, look around, it’s all fucked.”

“It’s _not_ fucked. Not while there’s people like us in the world to fight it, to push back. Take this shit, use your god damn degree that you paid through the nose for and apply yourself god _damnit_. Work for me, no, work _with_ me. We’re going to have to get involved and take some charge here, the government isn’t cutting it. The world is a mess and they need someone with a poli-sci brain, _your_ brain, to look at this with fresh eyes and fix it the best way they can”.

She realises quite suddenly, that Pepper Potts is not going to let the good ship Lewis sink, not on her watch. And that’s what this is, Potts’ watch. Maybe she’d not been as coerced by Steve has Darcy thought, nevertheless, she wasn’t going to win - and did she even want to? The prize was shitty and Pepper is certainly as much of a force to be reckoned with as fabled.

She makes her choice and levels a look at Pepper, pushes her hair back from her face and settles back into the pillows behind her, “okay, when do I start?”.

* * *

Just down the corridor, in a dark waiting room, lit by a muted wall-mounted television set that shows relentless rolling news, there sits a Norse god and the Star Spangled Avenger. If Darcy thought she had it bad, Thor had it worse. Thor got Steve.

“She could’ve died, Thor. She nearly did,” Steve tells him with the stern, take-no-prisoners voice of the Captain. Steve is, at best, angry and he hates being angry, he can only deal with angry if there’s something to punch and Thor’s face won’t cut it.

Bucky nearly lost his soulmate today and Steve is doing a very good job of convincing himself that _that_ is the problem he’s facing right now. Not the fact of why Bucky nearly lost his soulmate, not the fact that Buck is more lost than he’s ever been, lost not just to Darcy but to Steve too.

She just needs to hold on for a little longer, he tells himself. She knows what it’s like. She knows Buck, ok? He’s done this before, she just needs to hold on to that hope, hold on to her James and he’ll come back to her, just like he came back to Steve on the bank of the Potomac.

He knows he’s not been there for her, but it’s hard for both of them. They both remind each other a little too much of the ghost in the room and Buck’s absence is louder when he sees Darcy. She just needs to hold on, he knows a little bit about this himself, with Peggy… He can still fix this.

His guilt and shame are unbearable, and so is Thor’s but where Steve gets proactive, where he’ll do whatever it takes, Thor does not. Thor spirals before Steve’s eyes, a wreck and a husk of the god he knew and fought so bravely beside. Thor is falling into a place where Steve can’t reach and he’s scared that Darcy will fall with him. 

He hopes Thor will heed his words, hopes Thor will realise that he and Darcy need to get off this train now, if not for his sake then hers.

* * *

It’s early evening when Thor finally visits the room at the end of the hall. She’s still sleeping when he lowers himself to the chair long-vacated by Pepper. He knows Steve still lurks in the waiting room, with his super hearing giving Thor only the illusion of privacy.

Darcy is pale, paler than normal, and looks like she’s been broken and put together again which, he supposes, she has. It’s all another reminder of the damage he’s done and it kills him all over again to see his shield-sister in such a place both physically and mentally. 

Soon she wakes and the tears come easily for both of them. She didn’t think she had any left to cry but one look at Thor, the world weighing him down, her eyes fill again. They sit there a while, not saying anything, just crying companions in their pain.

Down the corridor Thor hears a throat clear, for his own hearing isn’t to be scoffed at, and knows their time together is about to come to an end. He braces, knowing his words will hurt like a blow from Mjolnir, “Darcy, my shield-sister. I think I must go away for a while. I cannot… I will not make you suffer too”.

She reels back in shock as if he’d slapped her and _look_ , his mind tells him, _you’re causing her pain yet again_. “I’m not suffering because of you, Thor. I’m suffering through my own damn shit, we’re just suffering in the same room. It’s adjacent suffering”.

He smiles softly, appreciating her efforts to protect him yet again, “either way it went too far and I nearly lost you too. I will not be your end, sister, nor will I help it come about if that is your will. I need to go away from this place, away from these memories. I don’t know how long I will be gone for but I hope we will stay in touch”.

It’s not a question but a statement and they both know it’s more hopeful than true, though she’ll fight for him and defend his corner whether he wants her to or not.

Thor leaves then, not looking back as he crosses the threshold and not pausing at the end of the hall. Darcy watches in silence and she is all cried out now, there’s nothing left but the burning feeling in her gut that tells her another person she loved has been lost to the mess of Thanos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, so much thanks to those who've commented, bookmarked, left kudos etc. If that's your thing, I've a hardly used Tumblr with the same username. Please call me out if I've missed any TWs prior to this.


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